Episode #119 Show Notes:
Intro 0:04
Welcome to the Blogger Genius Podcast brought to you by MiloTree. Here’s your host, Jillian Leslie.
Jillian Leslie 0:11
Hello, friends. Welcome back to The Blogger Genius.
I’m so glad you’re here. And before I get started, I wanted to say that our next MiloTree Entrepreneur Group is starting at the end of May. And you’re saying, well, what is the MiloTree Entrepreneur Group?
And it is a six-week coaching group led by David and me. And it is we have a private Facebook group. And there are weekly workshops and weekly Q&A’s and we are always available and excited to answer your questions.
So what you get is you get technical expertise from David, and then you get blogging and marketing and product development expertise from me.
Really, there’s a lot of crossover, what we touch: What we talk about in the group are things such as how to monetize your blog, how to optimize your blog posts to get them read, how to come up with products, how to think about social media, not just to grow it but to use it as a springboard for sales for community, for growing an audience.
We really talk about the technology that you need and Google Analytics and lots of interesting topics that you need. If you are ready to take your business to the next level. It is perfect for new bloggers. It is also perfect for experienced bloggers, who are ready to learn what’s working. Now if you feel like you’re spinning your wheels, I want you in this group.
And the thing that’s so nice is that we develop real relationships with you guys. We roll up our sleeves, we get to know you and your businesses and we’re always thinking about your businesses. holding you accountable, giving you exercises to push you forward but in a fun and supportive and I don’t know, really positive environment plus you get a cohort of other entrepreneurs that you get to meet and work with and talk to, it’s, it’s really cool.
I hope you can tell how much we like it, we really do. And what I think we like the most is just getting really close to you and really understanding what you’re struggling with and to to really try and help you. So anyway, to learn more about it, please head to MiloTree.com/group.
Again, we’re starting at the end of May the last week in May and I’ll be sending more information as it gets closer. And or reach out to me Jillian@milotree/com. And tell me you’d like to join the group because I would love to have you. And if you have any questions about it, email me and we can even get on a phone call and talk about it.
I can tell you if I think it’s right for you.
Okay, for today’s episode, I interviewed Jeannine Crooks. And this is really interesting, especially at this time, Jeannine is an affiliate marketing expert.
She’s been doing affiliate marketing or in that world for 20 years, and she works for Awin, which is an affiliate company and the sister company to a win is ShareaSale.
So I’m sure that if you’ve done any affiliate marketing, you know what I’m talking about. So we are going to talk about why affiliate marketing is so powerful right now. How to optimize your site for it, how to think about products, how to think about creating content around affiliate sales.
We talked about what’s going on with Amazon right now and how that is not great news for publishers. We talked about pivoting away from Amazon and what that looks like. I think you are going to get a lot out of this episode.
I really enjoy talking to Janine, I think you will enjoy hearing about this, especially at this kind of unusual time as we’re all trying to make money. I think this is the episode for you. So without further delay, here is my interview with Janine crooks. Janine, welcome to the show.
Jeannine Crooks 4:29
Thank you so much. I’m so glad to be here. I appreciate it.
Jillian Leslie 4:32
I feel like this couldn’t be at a more perfect time. Because while I think I know a fair amount about affiliate sales, as we’re even talking before pressing record, I realized how much I don’t know. And this is such a time when bloggers need to be making money.
Jeannine Crooks 4:52
Oh, absolutely. So I’ve been in affiliate marketing for 20 years now. I started off creating an affiliate program before I even knew The name of it was because there was the marketing manager of a small company. And I was like, hey, maybe if we do this, and we offered him a commission because they sent somebody to us, wouldn’t that be great? And it worked.
Later, I found out it was called affiliate marketing. Okay. So since then, you know, I’ve spent a lot of time with a lot of different companies, both small companies, I’ve been an affiliate. I’ve been a merchant, I’ve been a vendor for services that would help other publishers or companies. And now I’ve been with a win for nine years. So been with a network.
Jillian Leslie 5:30
Wow. And let’s talk about Awin is an affiliate network and its sister company, as you said, is Shareasale. And they’re both owned by the same parent company.
Jeannine Crooks 5:40
Right. Well, we comprise Awin US here in the US, which Awin is the largest affiliate network in the world. We’re in 15 countries. We have over 1500 employees.
We have 300 techies who are there always creating new wonderful technologies to kind of make everything easier and smoother and better in every possible way.
So, I’m very proud to be with Awin because our philosophy that comes right from the top, right from the CEO and the COO, is to always be about transparency and ethics. That’s why I’m proud to be with them because that’s something that we always feel is very important.
ShareASale share those values with us. We acquired them about four years ago. We were very honored that Brian Littleton selected Awin as the partner that he was willing to share his baby with, because we all know Brian, so many of us from so long ago, for so many years rather.
He felt that we shared the same values on Awin as ShareASale. And so, that’s why he selected Awin as the company. Because everybody wanted ShareASale. Oh, my goodness, did they all but we were the fortunate one. It’s just been a wonderful new partnership. So I’m so happy that that’s been going along as well.
Jillian Leslie 6:51
How many companies have their affiliate program on Awin? How many on ShareASale? Do you then need two accounts? Because we have two accounts. We have an Awin account and a ShareASale account.
Jeannine Crooks 7:04
Yeah. At this point in time, you do need an account on each one to be able to work with the respective merchants on each one.
We have a couple of merchants that are on both networks, and there’s a lot of transitional stuff that’s still going to be coming in the works. But also between the two networks, we have almost 7000 programs.
Jillian Leslie 7:20
Wow.
Jeannine Crooks 7:21
ShareASale has a lot more programs, but they’ve got a lot more that are kind of the smaller niche programs. While Awin you’ll find things like Etsy, HP, booking.com. A lot of the really big ones like Under Armour, Nike.
There’s a lot of really big programs that tend to be more on Awin. It’s kind of a more robust platform. ShareASale is perfect for folks that are just kind of starting out. It’s like, “Should I start an affiliate program?” Go on on ShareASale.
It’s been beautiful to watch how many of those have gotten large. They also have several large merchants as well. Like for example, one of the ones that they’ve got right now that’s performing so well is masterclass.
Jillian Leslie 7:57
Ooh, right. For people that are at home, yeah.
Jeannine Crooks 8:00
People are home. So, they want to learn how to cook like a gourmet chef. They want to learn how to dance like a ballerina. They want to learn how to sing like a rock star, or learn how to do rap because they always wanted to and now’s the perfect time.
Masterclass has just been exploding. It’s just been amazing. At the same time, there’s other companies like, one that just launched on there was LA Apparel, who has just blown up in a heartbeat because people love the clothes that are on there. They’ve got the time now to sit at home and do a little bit of shopping.
So, those are the kinds of things that even now during our fun quarantine time that you can go ahead and do. A lot of times what I try and tell people is, “Okay, you’ve got your specific niche, but now don’t be afraid to go broader on that.”
There’s kind of two ways you can do things. You can go deep. You can go broad. A lot of times it’s natural for us to go deep.
Jillian Leslie 8:56
Right. I recommend bloggers find their niche. If you’re a food blogger, you become a Paleo Food blogger. You have to find a space where you can have ownership, where you can be an expert.
But you’re saying now, let’s say you’re a paleo blogger that maybe you kind of go, “Hmm. How can I do paleo comfort foods?” Or, “How can I say, you know what, we’re going to loosen this up or something like that.
Jeannine Crooks 9:24
I mean you’re going to find stuff that’s going to be consistent with your primary niche focus. So, exactly what you were saying. So all of a sudden, you’re trying to find comfort foods.
I found one website on ShareASale that focused on vegan condiments. I mean, who would have known? I had no idea. When I looked at it, I’m like, “I got to order some of these. They sounds so good.”
And things that I had never considered before but we’re also consistent with vegan principles. In that respect, you’re going a little bit broad but you’re not leaving your primary focus. You’re not leaving the things that your readers value and why they come to you and why they trust you.
So, you’ve got some opportunities there to be able to do it. I mean, I always use a spaghetti site, or a pasta site as an example. For pasta, they can talk about Mostaccioli. They can talk about spaghetti. They can talk about fettuccine. They can talk about lasagna. For them to go wide, it’s like “And this is a great sauce. And this is a great cheese.”
Jillian Leslie 10:22
And here’s my pan for my lasagna. And here’s my spatula. And here is my setup or whatever, my plates that I use, the bowls for spaghetti. I totally get that. I get how you have to start to think more creatively about painting the whole picture rather than just if you do pasta, that it’s just the pasta.
Exactly. Exactly. That’s exactly right. You and I were talking just briefly a second ago about mermaids, you know about a mermaid party, which now is not quite as easy to do.
Jeannine Crooks 11:00
But that doesn’t mean that for your child who wanted to have their mermaid party that you can’t get them a little blow up pool, and you can’t get them to play toys that they can play within the pool.
And you know, make the whole thing there for them. Nevertheless, to be this great reality that they’re having this mermaid event now on their birthday, and then later when their girlfriends can come over, “Look, we’ve already got all the stuff.”
So, there’s all those things that you can do. My niece had to have her 21st birthday party virtually. We all joined in on zoom. We all in advance knew exactly what kind of liquor we needed to get to have a shot for her toast.
Jillian Leslie 11:33
Absolutely. I love that. Yes. My daughter, we just did her 13th birthday virtually and had to be creative about it. The thing that I think is so interesting, we were planning a big party, she had fun.
They played games online on a Google Hangout. It worked. She hasn’t said, “Oh, when we open up, can I have my real party?” That was her real party. It was interesting to see that shift, and how you can still make memories and have a good time in a whole new way.
That was really interesting too as somebody who wants physical parties and loves that. To just see that was like, “Oh, like I do feel like Coronavirus is opening our eyes to new ways of doing things and possibilities.”
So now, okay, let’s say I have a niche blog. Let’s say I’ve done a little bit of affiliate marketing maybe. We’re going to talk about the big elephant in the room, which is of course Amazon in a second, but how would I then say “I want to broaden I want to find new products, but I don’t even know how to do that.” What is your recommendation?
Jeannine Crooks 12:46
Read your own blog. Here’s the guideline that I use. Any noun, especially a proper noun, can be an affiliate link.
Jillian Leslie 12:54
Ooh, got it.
Jeannine Crooks 12:56
That doesn’t mean turn every single proper noun on your page into an affiliate link, but when you’re talking about a product, there’s no reason why you can’t link to somebody who sells that product.
I actually look at it as a benefit to your readers. You’re making their life easier. You are not sending them out onto the gigantic internet. “Hey, good luck, go find this thing.”
I’m going to tell a story that’s a little bit embarrassing, but nevertheless, my husband and I were in Europe, and we were going to old Prague.
We had read this blog post that talked about this wonderful hotel that was in a good place and had a wonderful restaurant and all these kinds of things. Yes, we wanted to stay there.
She didn’t have a link in her post to that hotel so I went someplace else. Booked a room. Got there. Wrong hotel. I don’t speak Czech. I was about a block away. It looked like it was in the right place. And I had to walk past the hotel that I wanted every day on our way to and from old Prague city.
That was a little frustrating. If she put a link there, we would have stayed where we wanted to stay and she would have made $60 in commissions.
Jillian Leslie 13:57
And wait. It wouldn’t have cost you anything. That’s the beauty, which is like when you put that little disclosure as a blogger that says I might make a commission, I always say at no cost to you.
Exactly. Exactly. It doesn’t cost the consumer a penny more to go through your affiliate link. It’s a way where they can kind of pay you back for having written that content, but you’re helping them.
Jeannine Crooks 14:23
To me, you’re always helping them because they don’t have to try and guess where that particular product is. You’ve shown them how easy it is, and you’re not making them click through, you’re not making them buy.
It’s just, “Hey, here’s a little bit more information. If you happen to buy something, that’s great. And if you don’t, that’s okay, too.” I really think of it that way.
And text links, actually, you know, which is why it’s perfect for bloggers, text links outperform anything else.
Jillian Leslie 14:47
Is that true?
Jeannine Crooks 14:48
Yup.
Jillian Leslie 14:49
Thumbnails? I bet because it doesn’t feel as salesy.
It doesn’t feel salesy. It feels totally organic.
Organic?
Jeannine Crooks 14:58
Yes, it does. You’re helping them there, but you’re not like in their face with an ad. And it’s just like, “Hey, I can click on this and that’s okay. I don’t have to worry that, okay, they’re going to cookie me and I’m going to get all this other stuff forever and stuff.”
I mean, yes, they do get cookie, but it’s, it’s in a different way than they might, you know, kind of a traditional display ad or some of the other things that are going on.
Some of the things that come from like ad networks, there’s kind of a different experience for them. It just makes sense for them to have that link there. And for them to click on it there.
Jillian Leslie 15:29
Is there a scenario where I go to ShareASale or I go to Awin and I start browsing around to give me ideas for content. Like, let’s say we go to the pasta scenario. I haven’t thought about serving dishes or having a thought about pasta bowls, because I’m so busy with my pasta recipes, and I want to broaden my perspective.
So, if I were to then say, “Well, I need ideas for new things to blog about which by the way, I do not in any way think is a bad way to think about content creation.”
Jeannine Crooks 16:02
Oh, heavens, no. It’s no way.
Jillian Leslie 16:04
How would you recommend I then go to ShareASale or Awin or both to get ideas to kind of broaden my perspective, things I hadn’t thought of?
Jeannine Crooks 16:14
Well, on Awin we’ve got our publisher directory on the outside of the interface. You can actually just go to Awin.com and you can click on the publishers link. It says, advertiser directory.
You can go in there and you can search a little bit by keywords. It’s not as robust as it will be shortly. But you know, you can get an idea by category of some of the different merchants that we’ve got. And you’ll recognize a lot of the brand names that way.
You have to be an approved affiliate in ShareASale but I mean that’s a that’s a great process to be able to do. It’s not hard. It’s fast and easy. They love you. So, come on in. We understand bloggers. You don’t have to have a certain amount of traffic to be affiliated in ShareASale.
Jillian Leslie 16:53
I love that. Say that again. So, could I be a brand new blogger and join ShareASale?
Jeannine Crooks 16:57
You can be a brand new blogger. We’re going to ask that you actually have a blog. You’ll have a presence online. Somehow we have to be able to at least see what you’re doing so far. But you don’t have to have 5000 visitors a week or something like that.
No. You can have 10. That’s okay. We just want to see it. Because we know everybody starts someplace. It’s hard part of the process. We would love it if, as part of your starting process, you join Awin, you join ShareASale, and we can grow together.
Jillian Leslie 17:25
I love that. So then on ShareASale, how would I get ideas?
Jeannine Crooks 17:33
Once you’ve been accepted into ShareASale, there’s a tab called merchants. Under merchants, it’s got search for merchants. And so, you can just enter a keyword or something like that and click on it. You’re going to get a list of all these merchants that we feel are the best results for that keyword.
There’s two ways you can do it. One, you can take a look at all the different merchants that have just shown up. I just did a search with someone on vegan, as a matter of fact, and we had 377 merchants that we’ll recommended to her.
Then, right next to that there’s this little tab that a lot of people don’t notice. It says products. And so if you click on that, you’re going to get to see individual products that show up that all tie in with the word vegan, for example.
And so she had originally started off with, like 12,000 products and then we narrowed it down and she ended up with almost 400 products.
She could just go through there and see what those products were, who the merchant was that was offering them, and be able to just say, “You know what, I never thought that look at this great t shirt that brags about being a vegan.”
They just loved it. You know, all the different cookbooks that were there or utensils and products that you have to be over 21 that come in as vegan. I never knew they existed. And neither did she. And she’s been writing about vegan for 20 years. So that was kind of funny.
But I mean, it’s prompted like all these different ideas that fast because you see those products. It lets you know that there’s new stuff coming on all the time that you never had an idea about.
I’ll tell you that that for me it’s like, “Oh my God, this is so cool.” I wish I could just go post this on Facebook or something like that because it’s a fun, neat product. I never really thought about that.
Kind of like we were discussing before, I never really thought about my serving plates. And I never really thought about whatever, and yet that’s all part of the the ambience, for example, of preparing a meal, or the decorations that you’re going to include for a room.
I never thought about doing that, or I never thought about having whatever. I never knew I actually needed a blank. And no one exists so I always wish they’d made one. And those are all the kinds of things that you can find either by just wandering through the merchants, wandering through that products tab you can see so many different things.
And you know, to me, it’s the same as like doing a Google Alert because it’s like, “Oh, my gosh, what a great idea. What a great idea.” And those just keep coming up over and over and over again, as you just wander the merchants. We’re adding new merchants all the time.
We add probably north of 100 merchants a month. So yeah, it’s really great. And that’s just on ShareASale.
Jillian Leslie 20:00
What about this? So I’ve got two products and I think they both would fit with my blog post. Am I looking at the commission rates and saying, “Well, this one’s offering 10% but this one’s offering 15%?”
Therefore, I want to go with the higher percentage merchant or am I looking at the brands and going which brand like maybe one has more brand equity, people will recognize that brand more. How would you parse actual affiliate program so that I know which ones to lean toward to kind of five value? How would you do that?
Jeannine Crooks 20:45
Sure. Well, there’s a couple of different metrics that you can look at and then you can decide how you want to prioritize them. One definitely is brand equity.
How well do I know that name, but I don’t always get hung up on that because sometimes there’s these little tiny sites that are a specialty in something and the products that they have. They’re amazing that I’ve never heard of anywhere else, but it’s because that is their passion and they have done all the research and offered you what they think is great.
I mean we have one program that’s just car remotes. I mean, it’s like I had no idea. We had one that was just covers for different kinds of cut fruit. Okay, never would have thought about it, you know.
Do they have a well known brand name? No. Do they exactly perfectly serve my needs? Yes. So, you know, kind of keep that one in mind. But I don’t know that I would make that top of the list.
You can look at the difference in in commission rates. Obviously, you want to make more, but the other thing you also want to take a look at then is the conversion rate.
Jillian Leslie 21:42
Let’s talk about that.
Jeannine Crooks 21:43
Right. Maybe the guy that’s at 10%, he may not be paying you as much but he’s selling more on average than the guy who’s paying 15%.
Jillian Leslie 21:51
That is in kind of the back end, you will see that.
Jeannine Crooks 21:56
You can see that like for example in ShareASale it’ll show you the EPC which is earnings per 100 clicks. You can see who’s higher, who’s lower there?
Jillian Leslie 22:06
Do you trust those numbers?
Jeannine Crooks 22:07
Oh, yeah, absolutely. We calculate those constantly. So, yeah. They don’t put in the numbers, we do. The network does. It’s part of our metrics that we want to make sure that we give you so you can fairly compare.
But once again, I’m going to say that those don’t have to be the only choice for you. Who has the better product? Who has the right product for your reader? If there’s two identical products, then you can use the other metrics.
If there’s two similar products that both seem great, let your reader decide. I found this on this merchant that I think is wonderful for these reasons. I found this on this second merchant that I also think is wonderful. Decide which is best for you.”
Give them some choices. Let them kind of explore and have fun with it. I’ve seen that done and it’s been quite effective. Some people used to do it where they would do Amazon and the specific merchant to kind of see.
Now there’s a lot less reason to put that Amazon link and more reason to put two other merchant links.
Jillian Leslie 23:07
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Jillian Leslie 23:07
Let’s go there. Okay. So, I always recommend that when people start with affiliate marketing, they do Amazon just because it’s easy, right?
You got everything, and everybody trusts Amazon, and most people have Amazon prime accounts. I am probably buying something on Amazon every other day.
Jeannine Crooks 25:17
And Amazon thanks you for that, but they won’t thank you for it as an affiliate anymore.
Jillian Leslie 25:21
Right. So let’s talk about the Amazon affiliate program. Amazon just came out from what I understand and said, we’re dropping all of our affiliate rates. You’re going to be making less.
Now, they’re cryptic. Meaning, they’re not usually upfront always about what percent of that sale you’re making, am I right? Or it can vary depending on verticals?
Jeannine Crooks 25:42
Well, it does vary depending on verticals. You actually can go into your account there and it will tell you what percentage rate you’re being paid for each vertical.
There was a time when Amazon just plain paid a flat rate regardless of what the product was. And based on your volume, you got a higher commission rate. It would go up to 8% at the time.
They change that on April Fool’s Day in 2017. Wasn’t that just so funny? The joke was on us.
Jillian Leslie 26:07
Yes.
Jeannine Crooks 26:08
And so, that’s when they started breaking more things out by category. Since then on just about everything, they’ve continued to cut their commissions over the years.
The thing that makes me so angry is they’re not cutting the commissions because they have to, they’re cutting them because they can. I hate that.
When they did it in 2017, the next day they announced record profits. Like, “Really?” So you’re making those profits also on the back of your publishers. Not right. And so, now with this most recent one–.
Jillian Leslie 26:38
This was announced, I mean, I talked about timing. It came out like a couple of weeks ago.
Jeannine Crooks 26:45
Yeah, this came up last week or so. Early last week. I mean they give you basically like eight days warning. “Hey, by the way, we’re going to take your product where you used to make four and a half percent. We’re taking that down to 1%.”
You know something we’re used to make an 8% commission is now down to 3%. So guess what? You’re making less than half. They did that with so many programs.
I mean if you think about it, four decades now, because our industry is that old, publishers have been sending millions of links pointing to Amazon. Well, now those links are in place.
Most of those publishers now, after Amazon has cut commissions, they’re not going to bother going back and swapping those links out. So those links are going to remain in place kind of forever for decades to come.
And now, Amazon doesn’t have to pay for him. What a great deal for Amazon. What a really rotten thing to do to publishers. I’m sorry, there’s no way. I can’t coach that at all. I find that it’s just terrific treatment.
I am proud of the fact that I work for a network and the merchants that we work with because we value our affiliates. We value our bloggers. We know that that’s a big part of our lifeblood, that it is something that we work together on as a team.
We have to take good care of our affiliates. Our affiliates in turn take good care of us by sending their clients. They’re entrusting their readers to the merchants. It’s a relationship that values both sides.
That’s what I find on networks. I mean, as a network from a network perspective, we’re trying to help our publishers as much as we can through this, because a lot of them just had the rug pulled out from under their feet.
It makes me so sad. It makes me so frustrated. It makes me so angry, and it makes me want to know, how can I help right now.
Jillian Leslie 28:38
One thing that we always coach is you take your top posts. You figure out the content that people are loving and you make sure you’re optimizing those posts for affiliate sales.
Let’s say you’ve got 1000 posts. You don’t start with Post 999 in terms of traffic. You make sure those top 10 posts have been optimized that you are continually checking to make sure those affiliate links are working, that you’re updating those posts with new content to make them fresh so that Google wants to continue to serve those posts up, you’re making new fresh pins for those posts.
Because what we know is if a post is successful, chances are, it will stay successful as long as you’re nurturing it. To take a post that’s not doing great for you to get that to be successful can be wasted. You’re going to spend a tremendous amount of time on that.
We always say like, “Take your B+ posts and see if you can push them into A posts.” And so, we’re all about optimizing those top posts. Do you recommend people go through those top 10 posts and take out those Amazon affiliate links and replace those with like ShareASale links or Awin links or other affiliate program links?
Jeannine Crooks 30:12
Absolutely. Absolutely. You’re going to find that Amazon wasn’t the only place where you could buy that product. It may have been the easiest, because you could just click but it’s not the only place where that product is for sale.
And honestly, I mean, a lot of publishers that I talk to will say, “Oh, well, Amazon is so easy to use. You can just get the link so easily right out of the toolbar.” Well, quite honestly, all the affiliate networks have some sort of a bookmarklet or something like that.
Then, the one on ShareASale is so robust. Oh my God, it’s gorgeous. All the things that it can do, and help you with, and give you images right there. So it’s just as easy to get the image, to get the link.
All you do is you just download the bookmarklet. You can just click on it and do that. A1 has a bookmarklet as well so that if you’re on the merchant page and this is the product that you love, you just copy and paste that link.
We’ve also even got a tool called Converter Link, which I love. We have a master tag in Awin. Converter Link is within the publisher master tag. It’s so easy and it just it makes things so much easier for publishers.
Anyway, that’s a technology but if you join Awin, put in the master tag on your site, you are going to love all the things that does. Converter Link is one of the tools that’s within the publisher master tag.
What that does is it will take an existing link and monetize it for you. If you’re not a member of the program, it’ll apply it to the program on your behalf. So, it makes it super easy to do that.
And so, it won’t overwrite an existing affiliate link. If you’re linked through to Amazon or something like that, it’s not going to do that. But if you, for example, are pointing to a specific merchant or page on Etsy, you know, when you’ve just got the link to Etsy, it will convert that link into a monetized link if you’ve been accepted into the Etsy program.
We had a wedding blogger. And when we first got the Etsy program, she was so excited. And then she went, “Oh my God, I have like 8000 links on my site to Etsy. How am I ever going to swap all these out?”
So, we told her about Converter Link. She made that live and you know, within a couple of minutes, she was getting Etsy sales. Let’s just say, now she’s not worried about where to send her son for college. And it just did it that fast.
There’s a lot of different tools that are available on the networks that can help you do that. I know that that’s been a top focus for us at both Awin and ShareASale to have all sorts of tools that are going to make it easier for affiliates, for bloggers, to be able to just grab that link fast, put it right in their content and move on because that’s what you want to do.
I’ve also heard comments about being able to use pictures because I know that that’s always quite popular. ShareASale’s bookmarklet tool makes it super easy to get the pictures for any given page for any one of their merchants.
Awind’s tool kind of expects you to kind of go into the data feed to be able to do that. We’re working on that now. That’ll be changed shortly. But in the meantime, it’s still not even all that hard. But you do have permission as an approved publisher in those programs to use their visuals.
Jillian Leslie 33:16
And what I would recommend is you take those visuals and you personalize them. You put text overlay on them as a pin, you put them in a collage because you will get more juice, especially on a platform like Pinterest because that is perceived as original new content rather than the typical affiliate photo that has probably been circulating around the internet for a while.
So, those are kind of those ways to take that content, take those images. You don’t have to take your own images of the affiliate product, but do download them and do manipulate them in some way that personalizes them for your brand or for your audience.
Jeannine Crooks 34:03
Yep. Absolutely. As long as you’re using them in context of kind of the affiliate sales process, so to speak, that’s okay. You can’t just kind of use them willy nilly on something else. I always have to throw in that caveat, you know. Legal is now happy with me.
Jillian Leslie 34:20
Yeah, no. Here’s a question. Affiliate sales, though, can take a while. Because if I post a blog post today, and I’ve got affiliate sales, typically to get juice for that post for it to percolate up can take a while.
What are your thoughts about that? Is affiliate sales a long term strategy? How do I use social media? Or are there other ways that I can get those affiliate links in front of people?
Jeannine Crooks 34:55
Well, I mean it’s going to take a little while. I’m not going to say that it’s going to happen overnight. Although on posts that you’ve got that are already active, when you swap out from Amazon links to other merchants, that doesn’t necessarily take all that long. I mean I’m already seeing people who are very happy that they made the switch.
So, a couple different points that you brought up there. I mean you kind of need to think of it like you’re trying to fill up kind of a tube. And so, you’re putting in links at one end and sales come out the other end. You’ve got to kind of fill up that tube with a lot of opportunities.
One of the things that you can do is make sure that your consumers have a lot of places where they can shop. Maybe on Tuesday you’re going to sell three from this page and two from that page, and on Wednesday it’s going to be one from this third page, and that sort of thing.
You need to give them lots of places where they can shop, different ones that perform better than others. But you know what? Long tail. Maybe I only get two sales from this page but weren’t those two great sales that I wouldn’t have had if I hadn’t that.
Jillian Leslie 35:53
And that I didn’t have to work for.
Jeannine Crooks 35:54
That you didn’t have to work for. That’s the beauty of it. You know, that’s one of the beauties of it. I’m sorry, I’m trying to remember all the different things we covered there.
Jillian Leslie 36:01
Social media.
Jeannine Crooks 36:04
Well yeah, you can do it on social media as well. Almost every merchant allows you to be able to promote on social media. So yes, you can definitely keep it fresh and alive on there.
Jillian Leslie 36:14
But with disclosures.
Jeannine Crooks 36:15
With disclosures. Hashtag ad is usually okay on social media. You just have to let people know that. And kind of don’t bury it at the bottom, put it up near the top. You’re going to make the FTC happy.
Wherever your little copy blog is, or copy text for that particular thing, put hashtag at the end of it. Like for example with the FTC disclosure, it’s not good enough to just say “I’m an affiliate” because affiliate has got so many different connotations and different meanings that that doesn’t keep the FTC happy. You have to also disclose that you may receive some sort of compensation.
Jillian Leslie 36:48
In a Facebook post, let’s say I go, “Oh my God, I found this amazing…. I don’t know.” Like I’m using a crock pot like crazy right now and I have a link to my favorite, you know, whatever. And then, I can just do hashtag ad in that Facebook post or do I need to say, I might make a small commission on this if you click.
Jeannine Crooks 37:10
Facebook has a couple of different rules than the FTC does but putting hashtag ad on there will satisfy the FTC. What else is between you and Facebook a little bit? I mean they wanted us to always try and imply who the merchant was and the merchant was supposed to have to approve you.
I don’t think they’ve been really successful with that the way they were hoping to so even though we’re saying yes, you need to, most people aren’t. So, I officially have to say follow all the Facebook rules. In reality I can say…
Jillian Leslie 37:45
Okay. Now, what about Pinterest? Initially, people were spamming the platform with affiliate pins. Then, Pinterest said no affiliate pins on Pinterest. And then, Pinterest got smarter and said “Nope, we’re going to welcome affiliate pins back.”
And then you do though need to disclose in the text that this is an affiliate pin. Can you do hashtag ad? Is that enough?
Jeannine Crooks 38:15
Hashtag ad will keep the FTC happy. Pinterest kind of bounces around a little bit on that. Paula Rollo and I ran on the street and have discussed this. Don’t shorten the link on Pinterest.
They do not like shortened affiliate links. Don’t try and get cute with Bitly or pretty links or something like that. They want all the stuff to show. But I don’t think it bothers consumers anymore like it used to.
I mean they know that there’s going to be all sorts of tracking and stuff in there. So, that’s kind of one of the guidelines there. At minimum, put hashtag ad so people know that that’s what you’re doing and there’s implications for that. If you are sending them directly to the merchant…
Jillian Leslie 38:55
Oh, yeah. Let’s talk about that. So, you could do two things. One, I could send it directly to Crate and Barrel and say, “Oh my God, I love this planter.” Boom!
Or I could write a blog post about planters, have a pin, and it could be, let’s say, the affiliate product pin, but maybe I’ve hopefully added my own pizzazz to that pin so it’s personalized to me, and then I will pin back to my blog. What are your thoughts about these two scenarios?
Jeannine Crooks 39:28
Different merchants are going to allow you to do different things. Some will let you do the direct linking such as we discussed, where it goes straight to Crate and Barrel.
Others are going to want you to have kind of a blog post in between. They do like you to do that because they feel the part of the reason that they’re paying you the commission is so that you can help have the consumer really kind of ready to buy it, that you’re doing part of the selling process, which a blog post may enable you to do a little bit more than a Pinterest post might.
So therefore, if you are on your blog, then you can maybe kind of encourage them a little bit more. Give them all the reasons why they should buy it, why you think it’s a great product.
You don’t have to be salesy. You don’t have to be pushy. You just share your opinion because they’re coming to you because they value your opinion on that topic. So just share what you know.
Jillian Leslie 40:12
How will you know whether you could directly link it to Crate and Barrel or whether it needs to be a part of a blog post? Is there some place where that information exists?
Jeannine Crooks 40:22
Usually the merchant will tell you on their merchant profile what’s acceptable, what isn’t. They’ve got their terms and conditions page. They’ll tell you what it is.
And most of them will allow you to do that because they have accepted you into their affiliate program. I usually think that it’s a very good idea. Not every network allows for this, unfortunately, but both Awin and ShareASale do, where you can go ahead and share where it is that you intend to put it at.
So, if it’s going to be just playing on your Pinterest group, then by all means, share your Pinterest information with them, what your URL is and all that kind of thing.
If it’s your blog, share it on your blog as well. You want to tell them where they can find your stuff. Transparency is going to make it a whole lot easier for you because if they can see that everything that you pin, for example, you’re very careful about it, that you don’t have all these misspelled words, and you don’t randomly throw up a picture that has nothing to do with that product or that merchant just when you think people are going to click on, you know, those are the kinds of things that they look at and say, “That’s not how I want to do this.”
If you are very open with the merchant and show them all the stuff that you want them to do, or where you want to use it, then they can fully evaluate you and work with you on that.
And most of them, I mean they get Pinterest. It’s not a new arrival on scene but they just want to make sure that you treat their product right. I mean they’ve worked very hard to build up their product name, and they want to make sure that you are in keeping with their vision of how their product should be presented to their clients.
Jillian Leslie 41:55
Do you think that Pinterest also is a smart platform? Pinterest will see a pin, let’s say to the planter on Crate&Barrel and Pinterest can read the link and knows this is just a photo of a planter and it’s an affiliate link and someone’s going to make money if somebody clicks over to Crate&Barrel.
Do you think that Pinterest then will say, “Oh, wait a second. Here’s a pin that’s leading to a blog post. There might be affiliate links on that blog post but this is real content.”
Again, I know you don’t work at Pinterest. It’s just speculative. But do you think that your pin will have more success linking to a blog post than linking directly to an affiliate link on a site, a store that Pinterest is looking at that URL going, “Where do we prioritize?”
Jeannine Crooks 42:48
I think Pinterest has logarithms built into place that are definitely looking to try and see where’s the value add. If it’s just playing a picture that links directly to a merchant, have you done anything to try and help that consumer?
I can’t swear to it but I wouldn’t be surprised if their logarithms say that if somebody is doing a keyword search, you might show up a little bit lower in the listings. I can’t swear to that but that would be the normal way I would expect them to do things because they’re smart, they are strategic, and that they want people to have a good experience on Pinterest.
I think that they are going to look for that value add for you as the person who’s doing the pin. Did you give some more information? Did you say why you’re recommending this thing?
First priority is going to be how are you helping the consumer. I think that that’s supposedly how Google determines what their results are going to be. I’m not 100% convinced on that but if you make that your priority, the people that you do get that come to your site are going to respond to react.
I can tell you that my husband and I had an insurance site. We were really trying. We were writing for the consumer trying to answer all their questions kind of on each one of these things. Our conversion rate was 75%.
I mean we never got big and we got hurt in the next Google update. But in the meantime, the people that came in, even though there weren’t a ton of them, really found the information they were looking for and they responded.
So I mean, it is possible to do that. It is absolutely possible for someone to make a full time income on affiliate marketing. I mean you’re going to need to have enough content for it obviously because you need to give people a lot of places to shop.
You’re not going to get a $500 commission on a single sale unless you are selling ski boats or something like that. Although I will tell you that the record sale that I saw on Etsy was I think $2800. Someone bought a two-story chandelier.
Jillian Leslie 44:53
Oh, wow.
Jeannine Crooks 44:54
I know. I didn’t even know Etsy sold those but what doesn’t Etsy sell? So I mean, it was incredible. They were not sent there from an article on chandelier. That’s the sweet part of it. That is something totally different.
Jillian Leslie 45:08
Let’s just briefly touch on that, which is certain affiliates like Etsy, Amazon as well, if I click out… because at Catch My Party, one of the ways that we monetize very successfully is through Etsy products.
Initially, what was interesting on Catch My Party was we put a party supply store on our site and it didn’t convert. So, we were working with a party supply company and selling actual products. And that we would then take a cut of the sale.
What works for us is Etsy products because of the beauty of the cookie, which is somebody clicks over because they see a beautiful, let’s say, mermaid cake decoration. And they then go, “You know what?” They click over, they look at it, and then their daughter comes in and goes, “Oh, no, no, no, no. Not mermaids. I want unicorns.”
They go, “I’m not buying this mermaid stuff.” So then the cookie gets placed on their site, on their browser. And then, when that mom starts looking at unicorn products and buys stuff, we get a commission on the sale, even though where they clicked over was a mermaid.
Jeannine Crooks 46:26
What matters is that it was your link that they clicked through to get them to Etsy.
Jillian Leslie 46:30
Yep.
Jeannine Crooks 46:31
Then, anything that they buy on Etsy, you earn the commission for.
Jillian Leslie 46:35
Right.
Jeannine Crooks 46:35
And you know, the other thing that you brought up just a moment ago was about the cookie length. That’s one of the other big differences between Amazon and all of the other merchant programs.
Amazon has a 24-hour cookie. So, if someone doesn’t buy it pretty darn fast, if they have to think about it at all, you probably aren’t going to get you’re commission.
But most of the other merchants have 30 days. Some have 45. Some have 60. Some even have 120 or a full year. The majority have 30 days to 45 days. But you know, that gives somebody a full month to come back and make that purchase. So they have enough time to think about it. They have enough time to evaluate it.
And if it’s not an impulse item, they might need that time to make that decision on what it is that they’re going to do. I’ve seen a lot of folks. My husband’s a photographer, so we know camera bloggers and stuff like that.
They’re like, “Oh, yeah, I point people to Amazon, it doesn’t do so good for me.” Then it’s like, “Their cookie is 24 hours.” If you’re buying a $5,000 camera. It’s not just going to be, “Oh, I like this one.” Click Buy. I mean a few people will do that but not everybody.
Jeannine Crooks 47:42
So, I suggest to a lot of people, I mean, kind of look at your conversion rate on Amazon. And you’re going to see that it’s not necessarily that great if you’re not just strictly an impulse item. “Oh, good. I need toothpaste and I’ll buy something.”
The other thing that a lot of people would say is Amazon sells everything. So, “Oh, Goody.” If maybe the same day that they clicked through on my link, and they bought a pair of sunglasses, they also bought a refrigerator or whatever
Jillian Leslie 48:05
Right. Everybody is talking about their refrigerator.
Jeannine Crooks 48:07
Everybody talks about that. It doesn’t happen all that often. I mean, I’ve talked to a lot of publishers. “Does it ever happen?” Yes. Absolutely, it does. It just kind of happens to work out that way. But I think that you’re leaving a lot of other commission on the table, in hopes of trying to get that commission on the tires or the refrigerator.
I think you stand a much better chance working with individual merchants on that Amazon isn’t going to give you a commission bump, because you’re so amazing. I mean, you’ve got to be doing seven or eight figures a month before Amazon is even going to notice that they’re working with you.
And even now, some publishers that were doing that, they took a hit just now just like everybody else. So, you know, it’s like, I’ve always told people not to put Amazon all in one basket.
Those other technologies that I was talking about, like for example, one technology that’s huge for affiliates, for bloggers specifically is Cross Device Tracking. And what that is, is say someone finds your blog post while they’re looking on their phone, maybe they’re riding their bus to work, and they found the perfect thing on your blog.
And then that night or the next day, they go home and they look for it on their laptop. The cookie is already on their phone. So, if they go to their laptop, and they switch devices and go straight to the merchant to make the purchase, normally on Amazon, for example, you would not get commission for that.
But we have something called cross device tracking on Awin so that if somebody goes from their phone to their laptop to their desktop to their game pad, we can follow that and you still earn your commission.
Last year, we paid north of $7 million in additional commissions as a result. Amazon’s not going to give you that. They don’t want to try and do anything extra to give you one penny more of commission.
So, there’s all those kinds of tools that a network can offer because you are the lifeblood of a network. You are the lifeblood of a merchant that’s online. They see that and they value that and they want to take care of you. They want to make your life easier, so that you can go out there and talk about their products to your consumers, to your readers.
I think that having kind of both sides having skin in the game, so to speak, has led to a way different relationship. There’s a lot of people who aren’t sure about working through a merchant program or working through a network and they go to an in house program, for example, instead.
God bless, a lot of our merchants have in house programs as well but you’ve got a couple things that you need to kind of keep in mind on that.
A network spends all their time doing things like trying to make sure that their technology just keeps getting better and better and the tools keep getting better and better. And there’s somebody you can always reach out to who can help you, that sort of thing.
That’s not necessarily something that somebody can do on their in-house program. We can create a new technology because it’s going to be a technology that… In total, Awin has 26,000 merchants on a global basis.
If you amortize the cost of development over 26,000 it ain’t so bad. If you’re trying to amortize it over one merchant, you could never afford to do what we’ve done, for example, with cross device tracking on a single merchant program. You can’t. It’s not possible.
We’re tracking literally tens of millions of devices. There’s no personally identifiable information. It’s completely GDPR compliant. It’s completely CCPPA compliant, all those things, right? You know CCPPA, all these acronyms but those sorts of things. We are ITP compliant.
You know, all of those kinds of things are built in by a network that can be a little more difficult for individual programs. The other thing is if you’re going to an in house program, everybody’s got a commission threshold. You have to have earned so much in a commission before they will cut you the check, before they will do the direct deposit.
If you’re doing it on a single program, you have to have a lot of sales on that program before you’re going to hit that threshold. Whereas on a network, it could be your sales from booking.com, as well as your sales from Etsy, as well as your sales from HP. And they all get combined together, and you hit that threshold.
For example, on Awin the threshold is $20. On ShareASale it’s only $50. I mean, they’re low threshold, and then we can send you your money. As opposed to having to work your way all the way up and selling on just one in house program until you hit their hundred dollar threshold before they’ll send you a check.
Just kind of these little strategies can all make a difference in terms of trying to improve your cash flow, and helping you be able to, you know, make more money from affiliate marketing because honestly, I mean, I’ve been doing it for 20 years, I have seen people who have gone from homeless to homeowners, because of affiliate marketing.
I’ve seen moms being able to stay home and take care of their kids, be a stay at home mom, because while the kids are napping, they can do two blog posts. You know, those sorts of things and I love those stories. That’s one of the reasons why I love my industry so much is that you can literally create your own job by doing affiliate marketing.
Every time I see one of those stories, it just makes me cry just about I’m almost crying right now. No video on this but my eyes are welling up because I think of these stories and it just warms my heart.
I’ve seen seniors who have found a way to supplement their income by starting a blog about whatever their passion is. I’ve seen people that are into woodcarving.
I think the most narrow niche I’ve seen was beefsteak tomatoes, you know, only beefsteak tomatoes, none of the others counted. She didn’t have a huge following, but she had a loyal following. And if she said this is a great fertilizer, they went out and bought it.
If she said I really liked this watering system, they went out and bought it. So she did quite well even with a small audience. You don’t have to have a huge audience. I would rather have somebody who’s got even a couple hundred really committed followers who will say, “This is great. She said it’s great. He said it’s great. I’m going to go buy this.”
Than somebody who’s got 100,000 followers who are kind of like, yeah, you know, next page, whatever, swipe left swipe right, whatever, that all works. You know what I mean on that.
Jillian Leslie 54:24
Absolutely.
Jeannine Crooks 54:24
Engagement is really more the key.
Jillian Leslie 54:27
Are you finding that people are able to use Instagram for affiliate sales successfully?
Jeannine Crooks 54:34
Yes, but you have to, you know. Instagram won’t lead you direct link. So you need to kind of have swipe up to your site.
Jillian Leslie 54:40
In a swipe up, can you direct link to an affiliate?
Jeannine Crooks 54:44
That’s going to be Instagram’s rules rather than ours. I’m not 100% sure on that. Since you can really basically only put one link in on Instagram and that’s the link you have to live with, what a lot of people are doing is they’ve got their website or they’ll even create a website for this purpose.
If they are primarily an Instagram person, they will create even just a one page website that says, “as seen on Instagram”. Then, you put the picture of the product and the link right next to it or the link into the picture. You can do all those kinds of things.
But kind of having that interim page keeps Instagram happy, and enables you nevertheless, to make publisher sales on it. So you can do that too.
And oh, by the way, you can absolutely use affiliate links on YouTube. There’s so many people who do all these kind of wonderful YouTube videos. Well you’ve got that nice little description section underneath it. You can absolutely say, “Here’s where to buy the toy that I just used. Here’s where to buy the training collar for your dog.” Since I have two Huskies I really look at all the dog stuff.
Jillian Leslie 55:51
I have a 13-year-old daughter and she is obsessed with unpacking. What do they call it? Like whole videos where literally some cute 20 year old goes to the mall, comes home, and like she in her bedroom is talking about the new mascara she bought with a link to it. And then my daughter is like, “I’ve got to get that new mascara.”
Jeannine Crooks 56:14
Exactly.
Jillian Leslie 56:15
It’s amazing the power of authenticity, connection, because my daughter believes that she knows these people. She trust them. She’s, you know, invited into their homes, into their bedrooms. And there’s something very persuasive, not in a negative way, but in a way of like, this person’s helping me with the new mascara and you better believe I’m going to go buy that.
Jeannine Crooks 56:40
Exactly. Exactly. Absolutely. You know what I mean? It’s very, very powerful. We have affiliates within the Awin Network for sure that are making five figures a month from their YouTube videos.
They’ve worked on it. They’ve got quite the collection of videos that are out there. They’ve been very careful in terms of who they’ve chosen to promote on their videos, but their audiences are responding to it. Kind of almost anything.
I mean, there’s even a few publishers, I think that are using Tik Tok. I am not an expert on Tik Tok, I’m not going to try and pretend that I am. But they found a way. It’s understanding your audience, and then offering to them the products that you think are good that they will like.
Jillian Leslie 57:23
I love it.
Jeannine Crooks 57:24
I mean, as a blogger, that’s what you’re doing already. You’re sharing what your passion is about and what you know about. People will respond to that so give them a chance to buy those products that you’re telling them are wonderful. You’re not making them.
I mean I wasn’t trying to be flippant when I just said, “Go check out your own blog.” As I go back and I’ve looked at blog posts, I will see things where people mentioned a product and they didn’t have a link to it. It’s like, “Oh my God, you’re leaving all this money on the table because you’ve just told somebody that this is so wonderful, and yet you’re not making it easy for them to buy it.”
I’d say be prudent about it. Don’t fill every single thing up. But you know, if you have three, four or five links in a post, you’re not going to overwhelm them.
If you’re a travel blogger, every time you mentioned the city, you could put a link to a hotel. If you mentioned a tour, Viator has tours probably. Because not everybody, like for example on travel, is good at putting their own things together. Sometimes they want to go buy it from somebody else. Viator is wonderful for that.
If you don’t want to put links in your article, at least send an if you go section at the bottom so they have a place where they can do that. But people naturally will click on links in an article. We’ve all been trained by that for the last 20 years.
“Oh, that links going to lead to something.” You can click it or not but give them a place to shop. Put those links in. That’s the biggest thing that I see bloggers not do is put in links.
I don’t know if they’re hesitant about it, if they think that it’s too hard to do. It’s not. It’s not hard to do. Seriously, I try and encourage people that if you just spend an extra five minutes at the end of your post, and make sure you’ve got a couple of links scattered in there, you’re going to notice it in your wallet in a good way.
Jillian Leslie 59:13
I love that. I love that. Okay. This has been so enlightening, especially during this vulnerable time. So if you’re a blogger out there, really think about this, putting that time and not a lot of time. But being intentional.
If you are an expert on something, help your audience by giving them the tools and the products that will make their lives better. It’s a a reframing that I think is very powerful.
You are not salesy if you’re putting affiliate links in your content. You are helpful. So put that hat on as you continue to help your audience and be an influencer and be somebody with a solution.
So, okay, Jeannine, how can people reach out to you if they’re having affiliate questions? What can people do to learn more, to learn more from you, to learn more from Awin? What’s the best way?
Jeannine Crooks 1:00:19
Well, you know what, I’m happy to share my email address.
Jillian Leslie 1:00:23
Great! Let’s do it.
Jeannine Crooks 1:00:21
It’s just jeannine.crooks@awin.com.
Jillian Leslie 1:00:23
Okay. And we’ll have that in the show notes so you can find it.
Jeannine Crooks 1:00:30
I’m on Facebook. I’m on LinkedIn. I’m on Twitter, so I’m kind of everywhere.
Jillian Leslie 1:00:36
Do me a favor. Spell it just so people can…
Jeannine Crooks 1:00:40
Sure. It’s J-e-a-n-n-i-n-e dot C-r-o-o-k-s @awin.com.
Jillian Leslie 1:00:48
I love it. I love it.
Jeannine Crooks 1:01:20
It’s a really long name. My mom could not have found a longer way to spell my name so she name me that way.
Jillian Leslie 1:00:53
Well, I have to say I would love to have you back to talk more in depth strategies. I feel though, like we’ve covered a lot, and hopefully we’ve inspired people to dig in to recognize that this is a really doable solution. It can really help during this vulnerable time.
Jeannine Crooks 1:01:20
Yes, absolutely. I would be so honored to come back again. I really do hope that we inspired some folks to see this as a new possibility because it’s not hard. It can be so profitable. It doesn’t have to take a lot of time. It’s one of those passive income opportunities that’s real. That is absolutely real.
Jillian Leslie 1:01:42
I couldn’t agree more. Well, Janine, thank you so much for being on the show.
Jeannine Crooks 1:01:47
Thank you so much for having me. Take care, and everybody stay safe.
Jillian Leslie 1:01:50
I hope this episode inspired you to start really taking affiliate marketing seriously. My recommendation is always go to your top three, five, 10 posts, look in your Google Analytics, see where your traffic is coming from. And really all you need to do is optimize those posts.
Sure, it’ll be great if we optimize all of our posts but realistically speaking, you will do 80% of it if you can optimize those posts. So, start with your top three. Then look at how your traffic is for your top five, your top 10. You’ll see kind of a natural place.
Go in those posts. First of all, make sure they’re optimized for SEO. Add interesting information if you can to those posts. Definitely, any place you’re mentioning, a product, add an affiliate link or are there other products that you can bring into this post to help your audience.
And then, maybe you could add a new collage for Pinterest. Remember, Pinterest and Google, they will reward you for new content. Also make sure the date for that post has been updated so that those platforms see this as new content.
And the best thing too that Jeannine said, I asked her after we ended recording, I said, “Jeannine, could bloggers reach out to you, get on the phone with you and have you give them ideas for optimizing their content?” And she said, “Absolutely.”
So please feel free to reach out to Jeannine because she would love to help you and she would not charge you for this, this would be free. But if you want to pick the brain of an expert, definitely reach out to her.
If you’re interested in joining the MiloTree Entrepreneur group, we would love to have you. If you want more information, MiloTree.com/group.
Or email me, Jillian@MiloTree.com. Especially if you want to talk about it. I’d be excited to get on the phone with you. Learn about your business and share how we can help you. And I will see you here again next week.
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